Despite Some Bumps, Project Zephyr Still Alive At VMware

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VMware's Project Zephyr public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service is still part of the vendor's plans, though its progress over the past several months has been far from smooth, sources told CRN this week.

As first reported by CRN in August, Zephyr is VMware's as-yet unreleased answer to Amazon, Rackspace, Google and Microsoft in public cloud IaaS. Zephyr has endured a number of stops and starts since then, with senior management disagreeing on strategic direction and development taking longer than expected, sources said.

Sources told CRN in October that Zephyr was in beta and on course for a rollout in 2013, but it's no longer clear if that is still the case.

"One day it looks like [Zephyr] will happen, and the next day, it looks like it's been tabled. At the top levels there is someone who isn't quite convinced it's the best strategy," one source told CRN Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

VMware is committed to moving forward with Zephyr, even though its time frame for rolling it out isn't clear at this stage, sources told CRN.

VMware did not respond to a request for a status update on Zephyr. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor previously has said it does not comment on rumors or speculation.

Zephyr is built on VMware hosted data center infrastructure and uses its vCloud Director, vCenter Management Suite and Site Recovery Manager products, as well as Cisco UCS and EMC Avamar backup software.

Led by former VMware CEO and current EMC Chief Strategy Officer Paul Maritz, the Pivotal Initiative combines VMware's GemStone and SpringSource development teams, and its Cloud Foundry PaaS and Cetas big data units, with EMC's Greenplum and Pivotal Labs organizations.